Meeting transcript
Board of Finance - Regular Meeting
December 15, 2021 · Watch on YouTube · All meetings
It's gonna be a quick meeting. Let's do Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with just Liberty. I got that wrong.
We always leave out the liberty. Do it every day at school. Hi
Linda. Hi. Okay. All right. Public speak. I don't see any public here. Am I missing anybody? Nope. So we are done. Does anybody have any additions or deletions they want to add to the agenda? No? Good. Yay.
Eric, you're up. Okay, can I share my screen Amanda?
Yes, go ahead. Hello, everyone. Hi, Amanda. Hi, Amanda. Hi.
Okay. Alright, let me single screen this. Oops, not quite like that. All right, I'm going to go through just the notes I made since the packet went out, because that stuff you already have. First things first, we did finally get the senior transportation bus grant. And that turned out to be 100% grant because the state got some extra money to fund that. So we're gonna be able to get a new 12 passenger bus in May that will replace our 21 old 20 passenger bus, which we're gonna fall down to the transfer station junk. So that's really good news. We applied for that grant last year also, it did not get it, but this year we did get it. So that's good. I didn't want to send it to you right before the meeting. So I'm going to send it to you after the meeting. All the public works expense sheets, Jay and I worked on them together. And we'll give you all that to review. You'll have a month to review. Basically, it's the expenses to date for public works, and then forecast through the end of the year. So,
instead of doing it, excuse me, in the over expenditures, I just want to talk you through a bunch of the things that you're going to see next month for over expenditures. The reason you're not seeing it here is the bigger ones have to go through the board of selecting first. Last year, we anticipated spending money out of capital equipment to repair the body of the 2,005 International Plow Truck. We made the decision late in the spring, early summer, instead of replacing the body, which was about a $40,000 expense, we'd take a crack at welding it and just putting it back together. So, by doing some of the work ourselves internally and just subbing out the worst of the welding, we got the expense down to about $10,000 to repair. So, it ended up being about a quarter of the cost. But because it's only $10,000 it was no longer a capital expense. The problem is, is that the public works maintenance budget is only about $18,000 and we can't absorb an extra $10,000 unanticipated expense out of that budget. So what I'm gonna recommend after talking to Jay is that we consider transferring 10,000 from the public works capital expense line into the maintenance line to account for the fact that that's what we did with that
piece of equipment. I don't know if you guys in the board of select and agree to that. But I don't think based on where we are overall budget wise, that we can just take it out of contingency, which in a normal year we'd probably be able to do.
I will. So currently in that account, that 435 account, I have a year to date expended of $16,009.20 and 7¢. Correct. Okay, so there's more to hit this.
Right. So, then there's no way we're getting through the rest of the year with 5,000 Right. Yeah. Less than that. Okay. Yeah. So that's kind of what I'm gonna suggest we do for that. I don't know what your input is on that as a board, but I think that's one, you know, reasonable way we can approach that. And we also are already over the overtime budget for public works for the year. Now, there were kind of three contributing factors to that. The first was, you know, we obviously had three fairly large scale storms in a row early in the year, all of which cost us a fair bit of money in overtime expense. And the second thing is we ended up spending a fair bit of overtime both on the repair of the bridge, and also on trying to get the work done at the Veterans Monument Park in time to seed
and put topsoil down. So those three things contributed pretty dramatically. Jay and I talked about it. And barring any tropical storms in the spring, in early summer, we think we can get away with adding just $2,000 to that overtime budget and make it work. And if we do those two things, public works can keep their overall budget in the black, you know, which is to transfer 10,000 into the maintenance, and then keep as long as they can keep the overtime down to a reasonable amount. Now that's all.
Question for you. Sure. Since we're talking about overtime. I'm looking at the expenditure report that we have in this packet, and there is year to date expense of, like, $1,500 for overtime for snow removal. Is that posted in the wrong spot, or is that truly we had? As far as I know, hasn't snowed.
I don't think it's shouldn't be ma'am, it could be $1,500. I mean, they have actually salted twice at this point.
So they have expended in the current month. So that would have been November $747. I can buy that. Maybe you salted then. But do you think we salted before then? Not before November.
So we have a year to date amount of expenditures $15.29 dollars and 2¢. So I don't know if something got posted in error there. And I guess I would like you to check that out to see if it needs to be moved to the public works over time. Yeah. Don't know if it was related to snow or not. Cause that may change how much money we need to put in the public works overtime. Okay.
Yeah, mean, the other thing obviously is that if we have a fairly mild winter, you know, sometimes we can recoup a fair amount of money back out of the public works plow budget. Right. But we did reduce. We did cut that last year. We did cut that. So, it's a lot less likely that we're gonna have access in this year than we have in the past. But it's also December 15, and it's been essentially no precipitation so far. So, it's certainly not setting up to be a bad year so far at this point. You know, on diesel fuel and gas, we're going to be probably quite a bit under budget on diesel and over budget on gas. And the reason is, we switched the F-five 50 from a diesel unit to a gas unit. And that's one of the most commonly used vehicles we have. And we did it kind of after we gotten through that point at the budget. So, those two things basically cancel themselves out other than the fact that because we lock in and we guarantee the purchase of a certain amount of diesels, the diesel, both us and the school, I think we're going to end up with a fair bit of fuel leftover at the end of the year. Unless it's a really bad cloud, because they ended up using three buses, not four, and we converted one vehicle, you know, to diesel. The good news is, you know, we're getting that diesel at a dollar 70 something a gallon
instead of paying market rate because we locked in really early. That's gonna be an issue going forward in the next budget because if we locked in today, we'd be locking in at more than $3 a gallon. So it's gonna be somewhat problematic in the following budget. We had a very minor overage in the fuel additive, you know, we were over like $24 which is not too big a deal. A little bit later, I'll talk about all the ones that I think we ought to be keeping a close eye on going forward. But I wanted to talk about a couple of things quickly. The first is I'm working with Sherry to produce a budget book this year to go along with the spreadsheet. And we'll try to get a partial draft out to you guys in the next couple of days, You know to basically put a single more fleshed out version of total expenses, here's what we're doing, here's the big contributing factors, here's where we are. Excuse me. And we're also gonna, I'll forward you a full breakdown of public works expenses that's more readable than the budget. Jane, I've been working on that. I just didn't want to send it to you directly before the meeting. We are going to get a little bit of extra money
from the state's decision to put a tax on nips and return that to the towns. Our local package stores, you know, sold something like 71,000 nips last year. So if you work that through, that gives us about $3,500 a year. And for the record, the state as a whole consumed 89,000,000 nips last year, which works out to a little over 31 nips per adult, which is pretty friggin' scary. And also makes you realize why there's so much drunk driving. But that's beside them. So, excuse me,
as most of you know, we've hired a new building admin, as well as a new assistant town clerk. In both those cases, they're individuals that have kind of retired from previous professions. And neither of them will be taking the healthcare, which is a really big savings for the town. So the town made out pretty well with that. It's not as cheap as a combined position, there are more hours total, but there isn't the high healthcare overhead associated with two separate positions. So, that's good. We have taken in quite a bit of money in the building department. In October alone, we took in about $10,000 in permit fees, which is, is really kind of crazy, actually. But, you know, so although our expenses for salary
in that are going up, they're going to be offset by revenue that the town takes in. So that that's going to work out, you know, better for the town. In terms of expenses, one of the areas that's working out really well is the transfer station, We're really down on tipping fees, and haulage fees, and costs for bulky waste and household trash. And I think that part of that is that last year, during the pandemic, everybody and their brother was doing dump runs and cleaning out their houses. And so we had an enormous increase in our transfer station expenses. And without knowing whether that was going to go down or not, we kind of transferred that to this year's budget. So one bright spot is it looks like we're going to have some excess money in the transfer station account, which is good because there are going to be plenty of other things that are over. So, it's nice to have a few things that are going to work out. I'm meeting tomorrow with the rep from the company that bought out Willy Waste. For those of you know, Willie Waste got bought out by a Boston based, you know, one of the great, the largest trash hauler companies in The US. So, we still have a contract for at least the next year. So, at least in a one year case, our fees are not going to be affected, at least not much, not more than the contracted amount,
which is unlike much of Connecticut, who is suffering from the fact that the trash recycling plant is being closed down. The big one in Hartford. Fortunately for us, we're not affected by that. Although I suspect indirectly, we will be in future years, because there's going to be a lot more competition for the space at the trash burning plant that our stuff gets sent to, which is in like Plainfield, I think. And I'm also going to Midnerok's meeting. Midnerok is the company, it's a collaborative effort between about 15 towns in the East that form a committee to deal with have joint contracts for hazardous waste and recycling. So hopefully, we'll have numbers in the next couple of days and
sign contracts for the upcoming year. And then I also put together a list of accounts that I think we're really going to want to watch carefully over the next couple of months. Because we appear to be overspending compared to where we are in the year. The first is senior transportation, specifically driver salary. And that's really been driven by the number of medical calls that we've responded to as a town. That's been up quite a bit this year. And that may be a really long term trend, as you know, our population is aging, the number of people that are 85 that are most likely to require those services is accelerating in town. Town hall custodial supplies, we're going to be over later in the year, but it's a small enough account. It's not a really big deal. We are definitely going to be over in animal control services. And that's because we signed a contract to use the regional animal control service as opposed to having your own person and having your own facility. While I think that contract is reasonable, it's definitely more money than we were paying before. Has that been posted yet?
What do mean posted? Some some of that was it? No. So it's in the so I
happened to look at that, and it was like, there was hardly any expense in there. So I was wondering.
Yeah. That's because we get billed quarterly for that. So we haven't Okay. Gotten So it's quarterly. Okay, perfect. Yeah.
Yep. Legal advertisements, that's mostly, you know, from geared from planning and zoning and inland wetlands. And that just means that they've had a lot of business this year. But remember, those are often also offset by fees coming in because all those legal adverts are paid for by the applicants. So yes, it shows up in that line item, but it's offset globally within the budget.
We see that on the revenue side then. So would that come in for building permits under building permits.
Yeah. Well, I don't know building or land use permits. I don't see a revenue item for land use.
I think that's just all brought in under the building.
This budget year we budgeted 55,000 for revenue, and year to date we've already have close to 43,000. So we should be over that revenue number.
Yeah. I mean, I I think I think we're gonna be close to a 100,000 in revenue this year from your building department, wetlands and zoning combined. Okay. As long as that
much pays for the cost of the land use agency in the building department, which is perfect. Okay. As far as I'm concerned.
Let's see. We're a little over for mileage for the assessor, but not in considering it's a reval year, we probably should have been smart enough to up that a fair bit. And we didn't, and it's not a big, you know, dollar amount. I think by the end of the year, we're going to be over budget a little bit for custodial services for the town hall and library. Because we did switch from a service to a person, I hired this guy William Bell who does the same thing for Hebron. If any of you've been in the town hall, it's been cleaner the last month than I have ever seen it in my life. And he's also been working off a pretty significant project list, doing repairs in both the town hall and the library. So, from my perspective, it's working out fantastic.
But it is slightly over budget. But the Board of Selectmen, know, and I kind of assume, you know, because a lot of the things that he's doing are not just cleaning, but building maintenance, that we would fill in a little bit of that expense from building maintenance and deal with it that way. Sorry. Let's see. Fire Marshal dues. They require a set of certifications. I don't know what, excuse me, it's not every year, but it's every few years. And they were due this year, we split the cost with Columbia because he's fire marshal in both. But we ran over our marshal dues. Looks like the overall fire marshal budget will be okay. And then the clerk wages in the building department are going to be over, in part because we've had a pretty significant transition between the old employee and the new employee.
You know, and because we agreed to split the positions back with the town clerk. Salary for that office alone is higher than the salary for a, combined the hourly wage is, but that's going to be partially offset by the assistant town clerk position. You know, and then there are a few line items that are just there's something wonky with them. And I haven't quite figured out what yet. The equipment maintenance for the tax collector, that's way over. And I don't understand what that's for. I don't think that's a correct. So I think that was something that was miss. One of my questions, there's a $14,000
expense in there. Yeah. And that doesn't that doesn't make sense. And I asked the tax collector about it. She's like, I don't know. I don't think we've spent, you know, we should be right on track. So, I gotta watch Sherry to figure out what that is. O129490 alarm system, really, that's the Tollen dispatch 911 center bill we pay every year. It's coded, it's named law. And it just, every time I see it, I'm like, what? Town building alarm, $10. No way. So that's what it is. We just need to rename it.
Unless building maintenance for town hall is up, so you need to check that one too. The 432. Yep. Okay.
Yep. And we also need to rename 02/5843. They changed the name of the organization from NC mental health to, forget some other crazy acronym, but it looks nothing like MC mental health. So when we got the bills and we were like, what is this and what do you people do? They're like, oh, it used to be. It's like, oh, okay, that makes sense. So we got to do it just so it's easy to understand. It's not a big deal. It's one of the regional organizations that we pay into that services Andover residents. And the other big thing we gotta do is under the employee benefits. They're still not coded correctly. And we're gonna have to come up and structurally change the way we do that in the budget Because, you know, the way the payroll system, in fact, payroll system doesn't roll directly into the accounting software means that's enormous number of journal entries every two weeks to get those in. And I think the compromise we're going to have to come up with is we're going to have to go back to what we did, we always did historically, which was just how, you know, essentially one pool for social security, you know, one pool for MRF, one pool for instead of breaking it out by department,
but then breaking it out from Prime K for budgeting purposes. So you have the information broken down by budget to accurately estimate it for the next year, but accounting for in the budget, just because I think, you know, unless we're going to add personnel in that department, that's just an enormous number of journal entries that we're not getting to on a monthly basis. And it's really kind of screwing up the whole thing. I was looking at this today and I cannot make heads or tails out of it because it's all discombobulated
in two places. I don't care how we do it. If we wanna do all the benefits lumped into that benefits department, I'm fine with that. But I want everything to be fixed on the budget side. I don't wanna be budgeting a piece over here and have nothing because there's negative numbers, positive numbers are all over the place. Right. And so that to me, when I look at year to date expenses, I want them to be right. And I want it to be right when we're starting to do our budget workshops and starting to be doing this. So I think this should be fixed. How, if we're going to go, you know, last year we broke out the budget, we budgeted by department. If we're not going to do that, we're going to put the benefits as a lump sum and fix the current budget the way it's set up in the system that way. So we get accurate reporting.
I mean, I think it's possible for budget purposes to break it out by department, but it's gotta be combined again.
But the problem comes as we're reviewing budget and we like to look at what did we spend last year and what's our year to date spending. All those numbers will be off. Because remember last year we had all those negative numbers in there when we were trying to switch over and it was confusing for the townspeople. Right.
I'm okay if we have a separate sheet to do that, but we need to make sure the numbers so we can get a good trend history. That's what I wanna keep. Right. You know? So
I agree that it it is definitely screwed up and something has to get there. And I'm concerned that if there's an error here,
I can't see it because it's too convoluted right now. So Yeah. We should be spending some time to clean it up now Yep. Before we get into budgets. My request. That's my request.
It is. It is. So that's kinda it for that. I just had a little statistics on, you know, nips in New England. Again, the Andover package store sold 71,156 nips last year. So, that's our tax revenue presuming we have the same number of nips consumed this year. The tax went into effect on October. But apparently all the package stores stocked up before that, so they didn't have to pay the 5¢ per NIPS. So, it'll take a while for them to run down their stocks and then the money to start coming in. But we will start getting some residents to it. Andover consumes slightly less nips than the state average. We only consume 29 per adult per year and the state as a whole consumes 32 per year.
I've never bought a nip bottle, never in my entire life.
I think I have at some point, but it's it's not something. I'm certainly not buying 30 of them a year. Every time I go in the package store, there's the guy there with his four nips and his two beer cans of beer going on. Oh, I know. You know, this is on the way home. He drinks those before he gets home. In the parking lot, crack a beer, and have a nice smell of rhino, which is crazy. But, you know, On a serious note, I did update this today. As of today, our fourteen day rolling average of cases per day per 100,000 is a little over ninety, right at ninety, which is the highest it's been since we've had to deal with COVID. So, we're very definitely in a pretty significant spike within the town of Andover. Hopefully, of you are, you know, have your shots and boosted. But, you know, that's it. And I don't have COVID, that's the one good thing. I've been tested three times in the last week and they all came out negative, so at least that's good.
The number of people hospitalized has gone up, you know, almost forty percent in the last week. So, even though we're still, you know, only around seven hundred hospitalized statewide for COVID, that number is, you know, gone up from three hundred to seven hundred something in a fairly quick, you know, timeframe. So, it's definitely something that's of concern. Not saying there's towns really going to do anything in terms of posture, but that's something to be of concern. We did finally get the heat working again in the community room After a long period of kind of struggling. You know, it turned out to be a $23 part that required about five hours of labor to get to. Because there's there's a fire damper in there in the system, which basically if it overheats or malfunctions, this thing pops, and it can't just be reset, it has to be removed and replaced. So cheap part, but put us out of business for a while. And that's basically it for my report, unless you have other questions for me regarding that. Questions for Eric?
Eric, back to, 16C and your renaming of the, nine eleven costs. Yep. I'd like to, I'd like to see you put that in there as basically that's the, dispatch center nine eleven cost both for police and fire and the emphasis on the police because they're using probably 65% of the costs of the center are going for police calls in the town of Andover. So, and the, the remaining is fire. So if you break that out, I say, I think that it's much more palatable for the townspeople to understand.
And the cost So how would you how would you want that name?
I would just say the Tollen County 911 cost for for police and fire services.
I'll say whether we can put that many words in the budget line item, but if not shorten it. Stop it. Very
easy. Very easy. I haven't they haven't figured out another a increase for this year yet. I will hopefully have some information before we get start getting into the budget of what what those costs may go up, so. Sure. Okay. I'll let you know. Fair enough. Okay.
Eric, I have just a quick question. Did we I know you said you added this information after we got the package. Do we has it been updated? I didn't check my email at the end of the day. I checked it earlier. Or, you know, all the things you went over, will we get a copy of it?
Yeah. I will resend out my report to you after this meeting. Okay. So, you'll have a hard copy of it. I've got a whole packet of stuff, but Yep. I just got ringed out by the Board of Selectmen for sending them information at the last minute just before the meeting. Actually, it wasn't even me. It was other people that sent them information. So, I'm trying not to do the same thing to you. So, I'll send it to you after. So, you'll have a whole month to digest.
Perfect. That's, I mean, that's why it's hard to ask questions if you're just like, I'm listening to you and I might think of something later. That's fine. I did hear that. It is hard to get the stuff the same day and then try to be ready that night, but I know you are. And I hope you feel better. That sounds awful. I can't believe you just talked through. I mean, I hope you take the time you need to get better to get well.
Believe me, I'm doing much better now than I was. Oh my goodness. Wow.
Diane, I had one other question. Yep. Seemed like this evening, Sherry's, I guess, Eric, you said Sherry's at the Board of Ed budget workshop. Is there any reason why her assistant couldn't be part of our meeting when she's tied up with a spear?
We probably could. The only thing is, a, we'd have to pay Marina. Okay. Because she's an hourly employee. Yeah. And the second thing is, honestly, she doesn't really have any involvement in the budgeting in that aspect of it. So I'm not necessarily sure if she could answer most of the questions you need answer.
Alright. Just just, just wondering. I thought she, you know, she was pretty, you know, privy to pretty much all the budget information that Sherry has for us also. Not not sure. Yeah.
Another thought that I had too, we know when these meetings are gonna be if Sherry prepared like even a memo to us or a report or a statement of where she is so that you don't always, I always thought this before I was elected, like Eric how much you reported on everything everywhere so it'd be nice if she just maybe gave you a bulletin with a few you know hey I can't make it tonight can you make sure you let them know this that you know just a thought, even if Marina, like if Marina's not trained in that same way and doesn't know everything, it would have been nice if Sherry prepared something for us.
Yeah, that's a good point. You know, and Sherry and I have talked about that and, you know, kind of one of the compromises that was made, and is because I wasn't particularly happy that the Board of Ed scheduled a budget meeting. On the same day that the Board of Finance had a meeting on the books for an entire year. That wasn't great. But honestly, I will also admit I don't look at when their meeting schedules are and I don't go to their board of ed meetings. So I didn't realize until a couple of days ago that they even had a meeting on the same day to check with Sherry and say, are you coming to this one or that? She's like, really gotta go to that.
She's coming to you. You shouldn't have to be chasing her down. She she she has to be. Yeah. Good. Be responsible for everything. But. I don't disagree
but you know, Val and I have talked about this a fair bit. And one of the things we're trying to do is we're trying to free up kind of an extended period of time for sharing to work on the town budget issues between now and, you know, like the end of the first week in January. Because that's So I'm just gonna give everybody a fair warning
because Diane is not happy with the financial reporting we have based off of the new system. And when we go into this budget cycle, I think, you know, for the Board of Finance, we have a lot on our plates, a lot to do this year. There's, you know, inflation is going, people are worried about reevaluation, we've got a lot of things to get done. It's not going to be an easy budget to put together, but I want to make sure that we as the Board of Finance have all the information we need to make the right decisions and to do our job. And I am going to be. I will be very vocal if I get something that doesn't work for me. So I just, I just want to put it out there. I want everybody put the effort into getting the year to date expenses right, get everything cleaned up because the board of finance should not have to try and figure things out. We should be able to do our jobs, look at it because I think we have a very hard responsibility because what we do impacts people's taxes and making sure everything's right. We want to make the best decisions we can with the correct information. And I just, you know, I just really feel strongly about this year after the experience we had last year. I just think this year we should have our act together by now. And I just want to make that point. You
you were on the other night too, Diane. I mean, I I think the board of selectmen feel the same way that we do. You know? I mean, they are they're wondering too, where where is she? And, you know, so I agree with you a 100%.
You know, I, you know, I go through this, I am retired, so I'm not like everybody else. You know, I've got time on my hands to go through these reports, but people who are working or have got a lot of things going on, I go through these reports and I'm getting my calculator out to check numbers. I shouldn't have to do that. I'm calculating percentage expended so I can kind of figure out where we are. I shouldn't have to do that. And one thing I will request is as we get to these budget books and everything, I don't care if you publish the official document or PDF, but I want an Excel spreadsheet for a working document for me. I want to be able to keep running notes and to know what's going on. So,
yeah, we know that has to happen. There's no way we can get through that without it. Not the way we, as a town do the budget. Yes.
And you've made it, you've asked for it, Diane, so it's not, you know, I think we've said it at meetings too and it's not critical. It's been said all along. I mean, even with the new software and the question so it should be expected so it's been brought up in both meetings so we'll see what happens. Any other questions for Eric or any comments? Take a day off to rest your voice.
I mean, we're at the finance department report part of the thing here. We kind of Eric kind of addressed the things that I found going through the numbers today. So and we have those items that why are we over here? Building maintenance and the the maintenance for the town clerk, that's way out there. Equipment maintenance. So we have some outliers, and that's on Eric's list to figure out. And figuring out that whole employee benefit thing. If we get that all done, then this report will be a little bit more meaningful. Trying to think if I have any other notes. Asked about the overtime on the snow, so if you could check that error. Yep. Don't know if that's a posting error or not. One thing I will say just to remember for budget, Now that we're paying the building official money, we need to make sure we budget for it next year. I know we're gonna have to guess, but right now it shows as an overage all the time. I know it's coming out of the permits,
but we don't have the income coming in. So when we get the burning
the building permits, where do those go? Oh, you mean burning official, not building official. So
burning permits, have on the revenue report that we have collected $90 so far year to date. I don't know if that's true or not.
I think we collected another 30. It's not a big expense.
And then we've paid out. Well, I see an expense for comp for $90 So I don't know. Yeah. So basically it's a special item
for it. Right. Right. Budget expense item for the next budget because we did that halfway through the year so
yeah. The other thing that's going to be a little problematic is I just got a thing from the state, saying they're decertifying all the burning officials, in the middle of January because it changed the standards, and everybody has to retake all the, online testing, you know, go through six more hours of training and pass a new exam before there'll be allowed to be a burning official after January. So I'm not sure Scott to make $90 a year is gonna be too happy about having to retake another six hours of training.
I can tell you I know he's not going to be so. And
the other comment I want to make as we go forward into this budget process we have all these funds that show up at the end of our expenditure report. And all that really tells us is what we budgeted for and what we transferred into those funds. I want to know what we're spending out of those funds for budget this year. And I want to have ongoing reporting on that. So that means these accounts should be set up correctly in the budget system. It's an outstanding accounting issue on the last Let's fix it and be done with it Because we need to monitor. That's really where all our money is being spent out of on these big projects.
Yeah, no, it's you're right. So they need to all get transferred from L accounts to standalone funds. Yeah. So they have revenue and expenses that are treated correctly. I agree with that.
So and I'm gonna want the detail for this year when we go into budget. So I can know what we were spending this year so we know it going forward. Sure.
I have a If we set up those accounts right, hopefully we can get them that stuff.
I got a question for Eric. Sure. What's the protocol for sanding and for snow removal? Is there a certain inch of snow or something like that that
needs for that? So, it's there's a fair bit of discretion. So first of all, we use a professional weather forecasting service that's specifically for public works, both for alerts and for doing a better job of forecasting when we're actually going to have snow on the ground, what the pavement temperatures are likely to be, and what's needed. And we very carefully vary the amount of salt we put down when we plow and when we salt kind of based on what's expected. So, don't think there's, I can't give you a, after a half inch we do this because it's very temperature dependent. Like for instance, you don't go down and put salt down before a snowstorm because then as people drive over it, it just gets bounced off the road and it doesn't do you any good. Usually right after it snows the first pass you salt only, you don't put the plows down and you wait till you get about an inch or two, sometimes three inches of snow before you plow. Because what you want to do is you want to melt that lowest layer so it never adheres to the roadway. But that's also temperature dependent. And we're also starting to buy both treated and untreated salt, because the price of treated salt has gotten much higher. You know, and we're going to start putting down either treated or untreated salt based on the temperature conditions, because treated salt works at a much lower temperature than untreated salt. So I don't know that I can give you a specific answer about when we do what. I can tell you I've made everybody in the crew go through the state green snow plow training, you know, which is basically exactly that understanding
what you put down. You know, when the vehicles are calibrated, and the amount of salt they put down per mile, and at the beginning of the season, each of the vehicles is individually calibrated. So, we know how much we're putting down per length of roadway, and we vary that depending on conditions. Right. Well, I'm sorry. I'm asking you to go ahead.
No, I was gonna say as a general rule of thumb, every time the crew goes out and salts the road, one complete pass of the town is about a thousand bucks a shot, not including wear and tear on the trucks.
Okay. For salary. I'm asking that basically, see a lot of comments on some of the Andover Facebook sites and people are questioning, you know, why are the plows out and stuff like that. And I think they need to somehow be communicated that this is the process so we don't get some of the, you know, people should know and people should be expecting certain things to happen during certain snowstorms. Is there anything that we could maybe put on the
Andover site to kind of explain it a little bit like you just did? I think people have to be aware whether on their state road or town road. I live on Boston Hill, State Road. They were out that Saturday at the start. The state was outstanding. Right.
Salting. But I don't think the town was out. Do you know what I mean? So
Right. And we debated sand, you know, salt thing early and in the end was decided to wait and just bring the crew in at five instead of, you know, plowing once during the night because it's cheaper if you bring them in just a little earlier than their shift. Right. Because we have to pay a minimum of three hours OT every time we bring them in. I think people can get confused if they don't know its state out there. Yeah.
That and know, why are people, know, why is it not being done? Or why isn't it, why is it being done? So, to communicate to them. So, because the season's just starting.
Yeah. I mean, the other thing to keep in mind is it takes each of the plow roots. So, we have three primary plow routes in town. We have about 34 miles of center line. So, but they're two way roads. So, that means you have twice as much actual physical distance. So, each plow route is around 21 miles. Diagonal the intersections, it takes basically three hours even to do each plow. So, worst case scenario in New England, you get about an inch and a half of snow an hour. So, in those cases, under heavy snow conditions, plowing full hours of town crew, you're going to have somewhere over four inches of snow on the ground by the next time the crew comes back. And people have a hard time getting that, Ah, you didn't plow my road. Well, actually, they're plowing it pretty much continuously.
It just, that's how long it takes to get back.
Yeah. That's what I mean. People don't understand. And if something can be publicized, something small, just so people know and for questions that come up, we can always direct them to the Endo website to kind of explain their answers, their questions.
Okay, that's a good thing for the public works director to write up. I hear you. Okay. That makes sense. Appreciate it.
Eric, I have one more quick question before we finish up with this. So you're saying in the future, and I know Diane was talking about this, we're just gonna see lump sums of all the benefits. So say like, and I understand it takes journal entries to get the reports like this in each department. So like the retirement is gonna have like one line item for that now going forward? Yeah. That's
that's actually how we always did it up to this year. Yep.
And I I did not realize how much of a hassle it was going to create to make the finance department do that. But that's, you know, and if we, for instance, ever switched to the pay, The payroll module and decided to buy the payroll module from this company and get away from prime pay. It's possible we could make it do it seamlessly. But right now, it is not a seamless process and there's no way to integrate the two software packages.
Right. So putting it in from every paycheck, keeping it. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Yeah, I, so that I don't have to bring it up another meeting. Thank you.
Yep. But he also have any other questions. All right, we're on to budget transfers, and I probably don't have any, but I have a question because I was trying to look this up today. Shoot.
Because, you know, because of all these line items that are just starting to pop. Right. When we have our overexpenditure report, because I've never seen an overexpenditure report in a long time, and I know we have them. So our policy was, and I can't remember, and I don't have a document that I can find. I know that you can approve up to two ks, two to five ks goes to the board of selectmen and five ks and up goes to us. Is it by line item or is it by department total? As far as I know, is by line item.
So we have some other expenditures that should be reported to us. And if
on my report, which I will send to you, I put a PDF copy of this, which is an over expenditure for with not all of them, but some of the ones from public works, the ones, you know, part of the reason is some of them will have to go through board of selectmen before they come to you anyway. So there was no way because I didn't have them in time for board of select. So there was no way I was gonna be able to give them to you directly anyway. So
that's on me. That's totally my fault. So just for everybody, because I looked this up today and I had to go back to old minutes to find it because I couldn't find a procedure or a document on the website and it's not in the Charter. So, a previous meeting in 2019, we gave Eric the authority to approve over expenditures up to $2,000 himself. 2,000 to 5,000, Eric has to approve and then it has to go to the Board of Selectmen for approval. And then anything that's 5,000 and up has to come to us for approval. So that's kind of Yeah. But you get a copy of everything. Right.
You just don't have to typically, technically, you don't have to motion anything that's under 5,000.
Right. So, alright, we're done that. We're under old business. Community Senior Center Building Committee. I'll give you an update on that since I'm on that committee. So last week we met and we met with the architect and the engineer, and it was the first coming back of the preliminary site plan and preliminary renderings of the building. Okay. So it's by not even close to being final. We had a very good meeting, a lot of discussion had. We're reorienting the location of the building and things like that, trying to fit it on the site right now. So all those revisions are back with the architect. Hopefully they will be able to come back with a final site plan in January meeting if they get it done by then. And then conceptually, also we talked about is what the outside of the building looks like. We haven't even talked about, we're not even close to anything about construction costs inside anything like that yet. So that's kind of where we're at. I think, you know, the way the proposal was done and the discussion, I think it'll look nice and we'll see if we're slowly chipping away. So once they have the site plan, then they'll finite the budget a little bit tighter based on what we want for construction. And then we will probably after that, it's going to be up to the committee, because at some point in time we have to give the information to the public. And you know, it's just got to have an estimated budget. It's not going be even close to being the final budget, because this is just preliminary stuff. Until we get total buy in, we're not even going off after, you know, doing the RFPs for the actual construction
and drawings for the building yet. So we're
well, but the one thing I would caution you, Diane, is that, I mean, the architect is using, I mean, they do have a professional estimator. So I think you'll find that if the final assumptions are correct, the cost estimates will be pretty close. If you end up making major changes in what you're doing, all bets are off. But basically, represent what the town actually builds. Right. You can probably guess that the cost estimates will be reasonable.
So, we told the architects we're a cheap town and our budgets a million dollars. That's it. So, because once you go over a million dollars, then we have different things we have to deal with which will make the costs more. We don't wanna do that. So that's kind of where we are with that. So those meetings are the second Thursday of every month and it is an in person meeting. It's not a Zoom meeting because a lot of times we're talking about drawings and designs and things like that. So anybody's welcome if you, you know, the architects are coming in, it's an interesting meeting to see what they have to say and they project out, you know, their renderings and drawings. Interesting meeting. Okay, new business. Okay. We have town hall electrical upgrades. We don't have to do anything act on that, Eric, right? No, not until we get the more complete I
am really, I'm kind of annoyed, but I'm really struggling to get contractors to actually respond to me, which is, you know, I get everybody's really busy. You know, and especially in the H back field today, it is crazy. I mean, when I was trying to get somebody after M and M kind of imploded, and I was trying to find somebody to come in and just clean and test our boilers. Like I reached out to not Meg Mechanical. And they told me they could schedule me in seven weeks. And I'm like, yeah, well, the furnace isn't running now. I'm not waiting seven weeks, because it'll be time for you to do the air conditioning bed, you know, and nutmeg's a company I've dealt with for many years and have a personal relationship with, you know, so it is it's really crazy right now.
Which is not an excuse. But it's an annoyance.
Can you give everybody an update of the, I don't know how many people went to the floor slug with me, but the assessor was on with vision and they did an update on the whole process. And I'm like too old to remember everything.
Okay. So, basically, at this point, what's happened is the preliminary assessments have been done on all the properties. So,
the vision went around and measured the exterior of all the properties, and then got into all the buildings that they were allowed to that the homeowner would allow them into. So all the property cards are as updated as we have information for. And based on that information, they then take all the homes that have been sold in the last, you know, one year, so they have a one year window between October 2021 and October 2020. There were about 50 homes in the town of the Andover sold in that period of time. And, you know, they take the exact characteristics of that house versus the cost. And they fit that they use an algorithm
that basically fits the existing sales data. And then it's also adjusted for the fact that as the year went on, houses that sold in October got sold for a lot more than houses that got sold for October the previous year. Because in the state of Connecticut, the average home sales price went up like 15% in the last year, which is crazy in and of itself. So, they take that data and they create a mock and they first test the model and say, how to weld this the model fit all the existing homes that are sold? And then once we're sure the model is good enough, that model then gets applied to all the homes in Andover. And the only thing that's different is that there's obviously a very heavy geographic component to it, Because there are areas of town that tend to be much more valuable than others. Obviously, the Lake District and waterfront property has seen a huge increase in costs of sales this year. And actually, that trend has continued since 2019. You know, and after that they issue everybody a revised revaluation. And then they held an informal appeals process, not appeals, but an informational session. And if homeowners had additional information or had concerns about anything, could come in and either do it via telephone or do it in person. Those are still going on now and they'll be going on for the next month because a lot of people are late in responding.
But they try to get the bulk of them over early. There were somewhere around 50 people already that have requested a early hearing. You know, that have been done already. Think there were four more scheduled for this Thursday. John Bonus said he had something like eight or nine interior inspections that people had requested, where they felt code for the quality of interior construction didn't really match what was actually there. And they were houses that the assessors vision appraisal hadn't been in. So, for those either John or a vision rep will go in if they're allowed and visually reinspect the inside of the house and correct anything that's an error on the car. After that, starting in February, the Board of Assessment and Appeals meets and here's people who, after vision, goes back and re examines the data that's been presented to them, makes any modifications that they think are appropriate, they kind of finalize the list. And it then gets put back out to anybody whose appraisal has changed. After that, those people can go to the Board of Assessment Appeals and present their case to the Board of Assessment Appeals. It's a three member board elected and they can present data on why they think their evaluation is incorrect. Board of Assessment Appeals makes whatever determinations they're going to make. And if people are still unhappy, their final recourse is the, you know, the state court system going, taking it down to superior court.
My question, I can't remember what he said. For us to get the final revaluation for the grand list, did John say he was going to provide that by the end of January or is it the end of February? End of January. Okay. So then any adjustments from the appeals will come after that?
Yes, but I mean, out of 1,200, typically, you're not gonna get 50 appeals, you're gonna get 20 or 30 appeals or less. And if you think about it out of 1,200 houses, if you've got all the automobiles, all the, you know, personal property, 1,200 houses, and you only have 30 that are in question, it's not going to change the grand list enough to match. So they have to, they have a specific deadline they have to certify by, which I think is February 1 anyway. And so I'm sure they will meet that. And that also doesn't encompass the, you know, all the supplemental assessments, which won't even be made till, you know, January or February
anyway, as people buy and sell cars and things like that. So, there are always changes to the grand list. Anyway, the grand list is fixed in time at one particular point, you know, for convenience sake, because the town has to have some number to function, but it's never going to be perfect. And, you know, the absolute grand list on any particular day is never exactly that number that's reported. Questions for Eric on that? Nope. Okay.
And you can all listen to the Board of Selectmen review that if you want a better explanation by John and the senior appraiser from vision appraisal, because I think they do a much better job of explaining
the process than I do. That's for sure. It was interesting to understand this, statistical modeling they have to use and how it's regulated and things like that. It was kind of interesting piece to get a chance to listen to it. It was good. Yeah. Yeah, think it's a good job explaining it.
Okay. All right. So item eight C Board of Finance 2223 requested budget. One of the things that Mark sent to me was we need to provide a budget for this. The new budget going forward. And of course it depends on how many meetings we do, and we have in our budget now I believe $2,500 in legal. And last year we took it out but then at the eleventh hour we put it back in. So if everybody's agreeable, we would do our budget for the number of meetings we're going to have plus the 2,500 legal, I think. Does anybody have any input on that or any questions on that or anything you want to see different? I'm good with that. All right. All right. Schedule budget workshops. Next on the agenda. I went back to the calendar and last year we did three budget workshops in March, one in April, and then towards the end of April, we had that public hearing. So we had like we actually had one, two, three, four workshops and then the final public hearing. So I think last year the budget came to us not until the beginning of March. So we really have March and April to do our stuff. Year we did it on Wednesdays. We did three meetings in March.
Can I share my screen here real quick? Go ahead.
All right. You have the timeline, right? Yeah, I want to put the timeline up. That timeline is also out on the town website because there's Right. A lot That's what I'm copying it from. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So the key is what date do we have to hit to get to the first, you know, town meeting budget session. There it is. Yep. May 17. No. May 3 or fourth, townwide budget meeting number one.
So we have to have the budget meeting for the town meeting by April 26. Last year we did on April 24. There it is. See. I see. See. Yep. Yep. So so we only so we really need to do a minimum of three meetings in March.
I mean typically it makes sense to do that tempo I think we generally do that, because that's when all the information is pouring in. I personally would love to spread it out more and get started earlier, but a lot of times just the information isn't ready yet. It's not ripe yet. You know?
We didn't get it. And the way I see it, we're not gonna get the stuff from the board of selectmen until middle to end of February.
Yeah. The the goal is to have the board of selectmen turn over a completed budget to you, you know, at the end of February. So you have all March and all April to do your part.
So for us, that means we have to book meetings in March. Do you want to just do every Wednesday in March?
We can always we can tend to reschedule something and then if for some reason we don't need it, we can pull it.
But we really had three budget workshops and then our regular meeting, right? So it's basically every Wednesday of the month. Right. Does that work for everybody to do? And then I'll do. So if we hold with that pattern, I'll put out three budget workshops in March, every Wednesday, our regular meeting, and then a budget workshop early April. And then
it's the public like a little wiggle room if we need an emergency cleanup. Right?
Right. And the only wiggle room we'll have is beginning of April. Do you know what I mean? Right. Or change our regular meeting to a workshop.
I mean, public budget hearing really needs to be kind of at the end of April. So, know, by the twenty fifth.
Right. So, we did it last year, April 21, that public hearing. So, we have to have everything done by them. Yep. Ready to go.
I like the March plan. I think we have, you know, what then if we have we have if we have to change it or add something, I mean, we're do we have to decide everything tonight?
Well, I just wanna make sure everybody gets it on their calendar. Eric, what do we have to do for this? Just give it to Amanda to get posted? Or Yep.
Alright. And it's far enough out that you can you can add them and make them regular meetings and not special, which is good, because that means you've got more flexibility with the agenda, and adding things at the last minute. So if you if you do it now ahead of time, because it's more than thirty days before you schedule, they don't have to be special meetings.
Okay. So I'll send an email to Amanda with the dates, and we'll do every Wednesday in March. So three budget workshops, which will be regular meetings plus our regular meeting, then the next first Wednesday in April for another budget
meeting. Okay. You're planning on meeting March '23, the thirtieth, and then April 6. That's what you're Yeah. You're running? Yep. It's gonna be a hard cut, you know? Yep. Nothing was more fun than last July. Right, exactly.
Yeah. And we also have to face, I mean, we have some things helping us out and some things hindering us. I mean, if the, you know, we have, we're losing the bond payment for AES And we're decreasing the bond payment for RAM. So, as long as they're not knuckleheads at RAM and they bring that on payment in, you know, and actually, you know, don't suck that money up for something else. No, there's gonna be a turf thing in there.
So, I'm sure this can be a turf thing, but remember, they still had a $600,000 surplus. Right. So if they spend the surplus dealing with the turf thing and give the town credit for the reduction in bond payment, the town will do okay. Yeah.
But we've got some serious inflation we got to deal with in a number of things. I mean, I was kind of shocked we had our rep because, you know, one of the things we need to start planning for is it won't be in this year's budget, but in the budget year after that, you know, we're planning on buying another plow truck. The last one we bought was $192,000 The rep today said you could expect to spend $240,000 for that if you signed a contract today. That is a huge hit for that. And that is what I was not anticipating was going to be anywhere near that kind of jump. And so you know the reason why, right?
Stuff's more expensive. It's called commodity surcharges put on there by the federal government because they, you know, shut down all of the American steel and everything else and we're back buying it from China and everywhere else. The same thing in the fire truck market. I mean, it's it's gone up 10% just just this past year for commodity surcharge. So it's just the reality that we all have to face. So
Why don't we start buying electric Bob trucks? Those are gonna be expensive.
Well, right now they, they're, they're estimating a one, a standard fire pumper electric, is about 1,300,000 each right now. And if not, gonna get higher. Figure that one out. Unbelievable.
Right. So we're good for the meetings. We'll do that.
Quick question, Eric. Who puts out the notice to the boards and commissions? Is it you? Is the board of selectmen or is it us in regards to, say, keeping your budget at a zero increase based on the all the different things that we're going to be confronting in the upcoming budget year? Well, nobody does that. I don't know.
I mean, you know, if you as a board of finance decided to put that statement out, you certainly could. I'm not sure all the boards and commissions could actually meet that, know, because they also have salary and things like that, which are regulated by union contracts. So, I'm not sure how realistic that is, but you can always ask and tell them. It's always it's happened a lot in previous
years, you know that. Oh, know. I know. Yeah. I had proper bank tell me that many years in a row. You know? In fact, he told me that the year we had to do the plan of conservation and development. And I explained to him that since they refused to put any money away for it, And we're legally mandated to do it. They're gonna have to pull me up. And the board of finance did. But, you know, fortunately, we actually budget for that stuff. So we don't have the huge shockers we did then.
Just trying to trying to set a baseline to start. That's all.
It's gonna be an interesting year. So I don't think this town's gonna vote for a budget increase. Exactly. It's my point.
Think everybody's a little with the way inflation and the price of things have been taken off.
Results here. Well, mean I mean The problem with that mentality is that the town faces the same inflation Oh, right. That everybody else does. You know, because let's be honest, we're going to be paying a buck and a quarter more a gallon for all our fuel and our electricity is going up 17%, you know, and I mean, we still are required to, you know, we have union contracts. So, I mean, we can't zero out everybody's salary increases. You know, we're not realistically going to come in with a zero based budget. Know, unless we do more significant reductions in town services. If we have to, we will mean, you know, but I mean, we see with the effect of Bunker Hill Bridge, what happens when we decide not to fund stuff. And that's gonna be repeated in other areas of town.
All we can do is put together a good solid budget for what we need to get done. Yep. And let the taxpayers vote. Yep.
Eric, quick question. Are contract negotiations ongoing right now with some of the unions that their contracts are ending? Or is that been settled?
No, actually we haven't finalized a contract for the one that expired last July and the other one expires next July. So we're gonna be working on both. Alright, yeah, I knew one was expiring this coming year. Didn't know. Which are which are those Eric? Which are those? The one that covers just the three employees which is assessor, assistant assessor, and tax collector. That one's still being negotiated right now. The good news is we agree on all the monetary parts. We're just don't agree on actual contract language on a couple of things. So I think we're close enough that it's practically solved at this point.
We're still going to argue over a couple little details. And that contract will come in for next year, The future salaries increases will be around 2.6 or 2.7%. So, given what inflation is, you know, don't think that's overly generous that's for sure. The other thing that we're going to be in good shape on is we, the RAM consortium for healthcare has been consistently under running the statistical models for expenses. So we're definitely not going to have an increase in our healthcare costs this year, which is huge. So that's going to be that's going to be, you know, one really good thing we have going for us. Any other questions? Yeah,
a question for Eric. What about grants? Do we have anybody actively looking for whatever grant we can apply for? I in in my line of work, I'm working with numerous customers that have hired grant writers and things like that for, I mean, everything everything from a, say, fire engine to a piece of hose. There's grants out there available for everything, especially with all the stimulus money. What are we actively doing as a town try to find a grant for whatever, whatever it is we need? Is there anything, anything actively going on? Because I know a lot of times there are. So,
believe it or not, we write a fair number of grants and we get a fair number of grants. We got a fairly good technology grant from Craig Bisha not very long ago. We have the connectivity grant that's almost a third of $1,000,000. That's on top of the DOT agreeing to the signalized exchange, which was another $150,000 We got a steep grant for $130,000 that's getting applied into roadwork. We got a $77,000 grant for senior transportation. We get a bunch of grants through the town clerk's office. We get other grant funding for senior trip, both senior transportation and senior activities. You know, we have a grant application pending for a feasibility study
for improvements on Route 316 to make it more walkable and bikeable. We're just waiting for big grant to become available to add a couple of car charging stations at town facilities. You know, we're already I'm already kind of working with the electrician on putting that together was supposed to be out in December. The state has now said they're not gonna put the grant out until February. I've got a DEP grant out right now. So, I mean, we're actually writing in our fairly successful bringing in grant money. But you're right if we had a professional grants administrator that was, you know, that we were paying to write them. You know that would accomplish part of that, you know, in a lot of towns use the town planner as a grant writer. That's a very common thing that towns do but we don't have a town planner either. So, no, we don't.
We don't have a super formal mechanism for doing it. But I mean, that's why I go to all the prod and CCM meetings. And I sit on the transportation committee and the policy, the policy committee, because that's where you find out what those grant opportunities are. So, I mean, I definitely look and I definitely apply where I think it's worth our while. But, you know, there's only one of me. Understand.
The second half of my question is that stimulus money we we got, what is that being used for? Absolutely nothing. Just sitting there. Really? Yep. And how much is that
again? Just under half 1,000,000. Okay. But as far as I understand, the board of selectmen intends to use that because that allows us to build the community center. If we keep the budget under $1,000,000, we can build the community center without going back to the taxpayers for funding. Need approval, but we don't need to raise revenue. With the money we have available, plus the first tranche of the ARPA funds, you know, we can build the thing and not, you know, cut into taxation. I think that's really what they're going for. Okay, thank you.
Yeah, and I do think that, and we're trying to prep for the possibility that there's going to be increased funding for, you know, transportation stuff. If the Biden transportation, know, stuff that's gone through the Senate and the House, nobody really knows. I mean, we know what the numbers are, but you don't know how that's going to get allocated. Presuming a substantial portion of that trickles down to the municipality level, we have to be ready to get some culvert work done and some stuff like that. And we're working to kind of put that together now. So, we know what the numbers are when we're, you know, ready to go. Okay. When it becomes available.
But we don't have a town engineer. It's, you know, I mean all these staff we normally rely on to do these things. We just don't have. In that definitely hinders us. You know, as a tap. Because it's, I mean, you know,
you close your screen Eric I don't need to see your Sorry about that. Yeah,
I guess they don't realize it because I have split screen anyway, so I see audit cases.
Anything else? Anybody have any questions? I have a question. Maybe I missed it or something. But is our audit done? If it is, are we going to have copies before we start doing next year's?
The audit is not fully done, but it's pretty close. We're at least three or four months ahead of last year's schedule on when we're going to get the audit. So, I think by the time I'm pretty sure by the time the Board of Finance gets the budget, the Board of Finance will have a completed audit to. Thank you.
I know, Especially considering it was not that long ago when we were three years behind on the audit.
I know. Was going say I can't remember the last time we had an audit done before the Board of Finance started working. Know you guys got away with that. I just What are they gonna do? Take our town charter away? You know? No. But you would think we'd have to pay a fine or something. No. We
explained that we were a poor little town that couldn't handle basic things and
yeah, we're stupid and we didn't know what was happening. Nobody
decided to drop the hammer of bat on us. So we got away with it. But yeah, we were hilariously behind for a long time and it's really nice to catch up.
All right. The next is the approval of the meeting minutes for Wednesday, October 27. Can I have a motion
to approve those? Make a note of that. Next motion.
Can I have a second? I'll second. And the seconds. Any discussion? Put it that way. No. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Unanimous? Okay. All approved. Larry is on reports. I talked about the community center. Don't know. Rob, you're on the CIP. So do you have anything?
I think I do. But I'm sitting here trying to remember it. And maybe Eric can remember it too. Was a small matter where there was suggested that we might want to put some fund money away for the eventuality of buying a piece of equipment. Eric, do you remember what I'm talking about?
Yeah, you're going to be you would ask that the last meeting or the CIP had asked the last meeting to have the public works supervisor present to discuss the capital plan for public works which was presented to CIP. That this discussion will recommence tomorrow. Will not be there because I got to be at the Midnirach policy board meeting.
Thought there was a specific piece of equipment that we didn't have a fund for that we had talked about creating a fund for Eric. Obviously not a fire truck because we already have that. Oh, yeah.
Oh, man. Excuse me. It's been a little while. I know what you're talking about, and I can't remember what the heck I It was a it was a fairly small thing. It wasn't like we needed to put a lot of money away, but it was just a planning issue. Damn. I am really sorry everybody. I thought I would remember it. And of course, it's been like three weeks, four weeks. And I've I've forgotten the piece of equipment in question.
I wasn't at the meeting. Will I wasn't at do you remember? No. I wasn't there. And I otherwise, I'd help you.
Don't worry myself in glory this evening. I know. But we'll we'll have our meeting tomorrow night, I'll circle back on it. I don't think it was a we have to do this right now kind of a thing anyway. It's more of a future planning.
Oh, you know what it was? I had suggested that you, assuming that we get the senior transportation vehicle This time with federal grant money that the town ought to consider because towns never had any kind of permanent planning or any kind of permanent funding for senior transportation. And you just got to do a capital fund for senior transportation. It doesn't have to be a big amount. You know, you could get away with 10,000 a year. And by the time, you know, we really need another van or another vehicle, if we can't get federal funding for it, we'd be able to buy it. That was it. Consider that.
Oh, is it 10 k a year for, you know, the next time we need a senior van to the extent we can't get a grant? That was it. Yep. Because right now we have, know, if we don't have a specific fund for it, we don't have a way to save for it unless, you know, you look at unexpended fund balance that way. That's not the way it works. Yeah. And the other thing I have suggested repeatedly to the Board of Selectmen,
which they don't seem to be, you know, considering, but is still a really good idea.
Of course it is, it's yours. Is that we purchase
one small vehicle for senior transportation. And the reason is very simple. We do almost the majority of trips we take with senior transportation for one driver and one passenger going to a medical appointment. And that passenger is not handicapped and does not need a vehicle with a liftgate. And we're driving them roughly half the time we're driving them in a 12 passenger van because both of our vehicles are in use at once. And it's just not smart to be putting wear and tear on, you know, if for no other reason than at 18,000 miles, you know, we needed a new set of tires, you know, that's 13 or $1,400 for six tires, you know, and they're not exactly fuel efficient vehicles. So, I have suggested that we look at purchasing a small electric, you know, vehicle that's not too high, so not the full SUV height and not super low. So it's easy for people to get in and out as kind of our lowest cost per mile transportation option. And we use that whenever possible with with seniors going to medicals.
Right. Or even even a fuel efficient, you know, you know gas engine car you know a Honda Fit to drive people around just as you know thinking of my mom's car. Right. But instead of hauling out a ten fifteen passenger vehicle diesel monstrosity to take one person to the dock. Makes sense to me but the question is alright so the capital cost of that is what right and then we have to maintain that vehicle too.
Right And that's part of the reason, excuse me, I suggested an electric vehicle. Two reasons. One, I think the town's gonna have to learn to deal with electric vehicles because they're coming whether we want them or not. Yep. And number two, right now over the lifespan of a car, the lowest cost of ownership is still a low end electric car. You know, when you add in fuel and you pay more for the vehicle initially, but your maintenance costs are lower, you know, and your cost per mile driven is lower. Because electricity is cheaper than putting gas in the vehicle. So, mean, that's really my rationale for buying it now. And personally, I would buy a Chevy Bolt. I'm not a huge Chevy fan, but I've driven the Bolt around. They're easy to get around. They drive pretty well. And they're cheap, you know?
Yeah, I have something to plug into our new charging station.
And that's part of the reason. I'm trying to write real community center. Yeah. Experience
with with those vehicles too. I I see the point. Well, I think it's a good I think it's a great idea.
Yeah and and likewise, I really think the next pickup truck we buy for public works should be one of those new frigging F 150, electric pickups, because the same reason we are going to get stuck dealing with electric utility vehicles. And we have to have the experience maintaining them, dealing with figuring out what happens, what goes wrong, what their strengths and weaknesses are. And I want to do it with a little one before I am stuck with, you know, paying $500 for an electric cloud truck and then figuring out what the problems are. It's gonna be more than that. Maybe.
I'll tell you right now. Okay. Any other liaison reports?
I just had one thing to add to Rob's report is the fire commission received a request to also update their ten year plan for fire apparatus replacement, which we are working on. Because things are So changing daily in the industry and stuff. So we may have either been over our request or not enough of our request. So that's what we're trying to figure out right now. And Chairman Barton brought that up there our last meeting. Yep. The other items you guys want to talk about?
I'd like to talk about the transfer station. I We're on regular speak, Yep, open discussion. We're on board, open discussion. Go ahead. I went up there this Saturday after Thanksgiving, and everyone's garbage was piled probably when I was there, it was 12 to 15 feet high in front of the dumpster that usually compacts, you know, each each bag you throw in of regular household trash. Apparently, our carting company did not bring back on time the our our containers. So Dominic was had everybody stacking their garbage piled high and and praying to to to the good lord that the company would would come up with a dumpster to hit the compactor so he wouldn't have to leave it for the weekend. Did you know when that happened? When was that? Yeah. That was a Saturday after Thanksgiving. Dominic Dominic had called, Willie Waste or whoever they are now, and, they said they'll they'll be up there sometime if they can get a driver to bring one up.
So I the town was almost in a in a in a pretty pretty bad time with with all that household trash piling up there, especially if it had overnight.
Well, I mean, if worse comes to worse, we would throw it in an open dumpster and tell Willie Ways, hey, your problem. We've done that before.
I understand that, but those were full too, Eric. Yeah, that's a problem. Everything was full up there and there were no, they never brought back the, the dumpsters for the, thing. So I, I personally, and I brought this up before, is to look at our costs for, we must rent the, do we rent, do we rent the containers from Willy Waste that we, that we use to, to compact our garbage into their containers? And then we pay them to cart the containers back and forth, each week? Correct.
And, you know, looking at I I haven't re started my research yet, but the town of Marlborough, town of Hebron went and purchased their own containers, and they and they both both found started off with it started out with a used container truck or, I mean, you know, what what do they call those? The compacting trucks there to haul them back and forth themselves with their own town employees Right. Twice a week to see if we can cut down on the cost of the rental and the carting costs with Willie Waste. We do have the personnel to drive a truck. They have their CDL licenses and things like that. And I guess it's not a hard thing to do to drive to Willamantix, pull into the thing and dump our trash and bring the empty container back to our transfer station and be ready to go for the next open deck. So that that was just just a just a food for thought for budgeting purposes. Yeah. And I know we we we pay a lot of money for for garbage in this town. And just trying to get the best bang for our buck personally.
Actually, not really. Our arrangement with Willie Waste is pretty good. Right now. We'd be absolutely thankful we're not a mirror town, dealing with that because No, I understand that. No, I hear you know all about that. Right.
I know all about that and everything else, but I know Marlborough and Hebron both take their trash to Willie Ways like we do, but they do it on their own, their own vehicles with their own personnel, public works personnel, you know, on a regular schedule.
Yeah, there are a batch of the towns. They're actually having stuff hauled and disposing of it in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Can you imagine what the trucking costs are? You know, to run stuff out to scrap in Pennsylvania?
Right. But you said you said yourself, we're not in that situation, being with Willie Waste, you know, versus, taking our our trash to Hartford, like the other bigger towns. Yeah. Because that is gonna close.
No, that's the whole state is screwed and everybody's screaming at each other. You know, Mira is screaming at the state, DEEP is screaming at Mira, the towns are all screaming at DEEP and Mira. The COG is, are mad, CROG is mad, you know, CCM is mad. Everybody's mad, but nobody has a solution.
I I only brought it up and I I don't think quick enough to take my cell phone and take a picture of the mountain of garbage that was there. With the idea of that, that, that may have spent the rest of the weekend piled high at our transfer station. So, just based on the fact that somebody forgot to bring our dumps or the dumpsters that we rent back to our facility so that we could compact the town's garbage in it. So Yeah. And then that wasn't there everybody that pulled in was making a comment and saw it. So that was a very, very busy matter.
Just just food for thought. Everybody have any Promise.
Linda? No? Everybody good? Well, it's that time of the evening where we can all go home.
I have a nip on the drive home, I hope. Maybe a couple. Hey,
we're out of judgment. Can I have a motion to adjourn? I will make that motion. Kurt's going to second. Thanks, Kurt. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Hey, everybody have a good holiday. You too. You too. Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas. Yeah. Thanks. I'll need it. Put yourself and we'll we'll all be best buds this coming first of the year. Oh, okay. We have lots of meetings. Alright. Peace. Bye. Bye bye.